I tried to leave, but he stopped me.
"Thirty thousand people! Where will we put them?"
"You'll figure something out. It will only be for a short while, but right now I'm in a hurry. Look, just act like you know what you're doing, delegate specific responsibilities to specific people, tell them what you want accomplished, and they'll get it done, somehow. Or, if they don't, put somebody else in charge."
"Yes, sir."
Four hours later we had all of the ex-hostages at the school, crowded into every place from the wrecked auto shop to the principal's office.
Dr. Kapinski told us about a food warehouse nearby. We took a hundred healthy volunteers, five tanks with their sleds, and the humanoid drones, and looted the place. We returned with almost four hundred tons of food, most of which didn't need cooking. The school still had water and lights, so our people could stay alive for weeks, if it took that long for us to figure out what was going on.
I called my squad together for a conference in Dream World.
"So Quincy, what's our defensive position?"
"We're secure enough, especially since there doesn't seem to be an enemy around to threaten us. We have two hundred and twenty-eight veterans who are armed and doing guard duty, under a guy named Kowalski, who seems pretty competent. Some of those men don't have anything but a pistol or a grenade, but they're ready to fight if they have to, and that's the important thing. A bunch of guys are working in the school's shops, cobbling up some more weapons. I don't know what they'll be able to come up with, but it seems to keep them happy. I've issued out our tanks' survival kits, with their knives and assault rifles, incidentally."
"Good thought, that," I said. "So, the people here are safe enough, and we still don't know what is happening, where our lines are, or what happened to the enemy. I propose that we go and find out. Quincy, I'm leaving you and Zuzanna here with the fourteen standard drones, and two of the humanoid ones to guard these people. After the rest of us leave, tell Dr. Kapinski and Kowalski what we are doing."
Agnieshka put a map up, showing the immediate area around the school.
"Now, I think that if we extend our outer perimeter out to these four corridors, station a tank here and here, at opposite corners, and support the intersections in between with drones, we should be safe enough. Use the civilian guards under Kowalski's command, and have him defend along these lines, here, here, here, and here, inside our outer perimeter. Maria, Kasia and I will take the mice and the other three humanoid drones, and do some exploring. If we are able to contact our side, and if we are not able to come back here with them, the password will be 'Derdowski sent us.' Comments?"
"No, that will work well enough," Quincy said.
"And I like being able to guard my family," Zuzanna said. "Thank you."
"Good. Cast off the sleds. The civilians can finish unloading them without our help. Maria, I want the rail gun in front. Take the point. Kasia, you are rear guard. Let's move!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Run Away! Run Awayyy!
Kasia said, "We know where the Earthworms had their hospital complex. With their headquarters gone, that would have been the hardest thing for them to move. If they are anywhere, that's where they'll be. Let's go there and see what we can find. Cautiously, of course."
"That sounds like a workable plan," I said.
We passed fully a dozen abandoned check points, but saw not one single human being or functional military machine on the way.
We stopped at two automatic factories that we came across, and had our tanks talk to the computers who ran them, but we didn't learn much. The factories hadn't been able to contact anyone or anything for days, and they hadn't seen anybody passing by for eight hours, but they had kept on working as best as they could, doing their jobs, having nothing better to do.
The hospital was right where it was supposed to be, but there wasn't anybody there.
Most of it had been dedicated to treating the men they thought were down with cholera, and there really was shit all over the place. Fortunately, the sensory inputs on a tank can be selectively turned off, and after the first whiff of the stench, we all switched off our olfactory sensors.
Kasia said, "You know, once we destroyed their computer, their medical packaging machine would have stopped working as well. Without repeated doses of my 'medicine,' those 'cholera' victims would have gotten healthy enough to move in a few hours, if they were given enough water to drink. They might have been well enough to walk out of here."
"That would explain most of the people who were hospitalized. I imagine that those who were actually wounded had to be carried out in ambulances or on stretchers," I said.
Looking around in my drone, I found that there was a refrigerated section that was filled with thousands of corpses, stacked up like firewood, with only their boots showing. They had abandoned their dead when they'd left. I closed the door, and left them for someone else to worry about.
We Kashubians traditionally had our bodies cremated, and the ashes scattered in a special memorial flower garden, but the Earthers' families might want theirs sent home for burial.
Well, it wasn't my job.
Still, I wondered how many of them had died when their guns had exploded on them. Best to not think of such things.
"Any other ideas?" I asked what was left of my squad.
"If they are gone, they must have gone somewhere," Maria said. "Let's start checking the transporter transmitters."
We went to the nearest one, and it obviously had seen a lot of use lately. There were huge piles of damaged and abandoned equipment around it, plus at least three more bodies on stretchers. Those guys had apparently died on their way from the hospital to here, and their bodies had simply been abandoned.
They had left most of their vehicles and heavy weapons behind, including over a dozen Mark XIX tanks. They were sitting there with their coffins open and empty, and with the survival kits missing. These tanks each had a half dozen computers on board, but only one was really intelligent. Being tankers, these Earthers had each pulled the computer rack that contained their tank's personality, and had taken them with them, just as I would have done, to save Agnieshka. This also made those tanks completely safe to be around. They no longer had brains enough to be aggressive.
At least, when we got Conan, our missing squad member, back to someplace with enough air to let him get out of his coffin, we had a tank to put him and his metal lady into.
We checked out the serial numbers on the tanks, and yes, they had all been built right here on New Kashubia. Maybe Earth had not set up an alternate weapons manufacturing center, when they had lost New Kashubia. It might have been some bureaucrat's idea of saving money. It was downright silly of them, if that was the case.
Agnieshka took our drone and checked out the settings on the transmitter.
"They've all gone to New Nigeria, boss," she said.
"I suppose that that makes some kind of sense," I said. "A bunch of primitive hunter-gatherers probably couldn't give a modern army much trouble, even if it was disorganized and demoralized."
"But they won't be seeing any New Nigerians, boss. They set the transmitter to deliver them to the fourth receiver on the planet."
"The fourth? I thought that they only had three receivers on New Nigeria."
"They only had three in any kind of regular use, but a fourth was built and set up on the other side of the planet by another philanthropical group. It's on a completely unused and unexplored continent. It was supposed to open up the wilderness for future colonization, but nobody wanted to go someplace where they couldn't get back without walking fifteen thousand kilometers through a complete wilderness, so it was never used, not even by scientific surveys."
"Then why did the Earthworms go there?"
"I suspect that it was by mistake. On the menu, these things are listed with the newest receivers on the top of the list. This was the newest receiver on New Nigeria."
"So they are
all sitting out there in an unexplored, and probably inhospitable wilderness. Well, getting them back is Earth's problem."
"If indeed they got there at all, boss. That receiver has been sitting there, in an Earth type environment, unattended, for over twenty years. I wouldn't count on it still being operational."
I extended the coffin out of my tank, sat up, took my helmet off, and let Kasia's drone take Agnieshka's personality computer out of my coffin. She plugged it into the newest of the abandoned tanks long enough for Agnieshka to program the thing to simply follow me, no matter what, and to obey simple instructions. That way, we were sure of having a functional tank to put Conan into.
Then, thinking about it, I had her do the same thing to the other thirteen enemy tanks as well. You never can tell when you might want to look really formidable, and seventeen main battle tanks can do that for you.
When Agnieshka was back in my tank, and I was back in the coffin, she said that it was amazing just how slow those old silicon computers were. She'd had to work hard to slow herself down enough to reprogram them.
We checked six other nearby transmitters, and none of them had been used lately. Apparently, our former enemies had been afraid both of being separated from each other and of arriving simultaneously at the same receiver with a group operating from a different transmitter, so they had all used the same transmitter, with the same faulty setting, to escape in.
It must have been quite a scramble to get out. No wonder they had abandoned so much of their equipment.
I said, "That explains what happened to the Earthworms. Now, what happened to all of our people? If the bad guys were running away, the good guys should have been chasing them. Every dog knows that!"
"The communication lines are still out. There's nothing we can do but to keep on looking for them," Maria said.
"I expect that you are right. Let's move."
We searched for fully a standard hour, over a day in Dream World, before we saw an Earth-style jeep with three Gurkhas in it coming toward us. I called our convoy to a halt, got into my drone, and walked out in front of it with my hands out in a peaceful gesture.
A man standing in the back of the jeep with a lance naik's insignia on his sleeve kept a pintle-mounted heavy machine gun pointed at me, but one of the special joys of using humanoid drones was that you didn't have to worry about that sort of thing. If they had shot the drone, I wouldn't have been happy, but I wouldn't have been dead, either.
Agnieshka told me that the man who got out to meet me was wearing the uniform of a jemadar, or lieutenant, of the Gurkha battalion. He was a small, brown-skinned fellow, and very neatly dressed. His weapons were well used, but clean. He had an assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his belt, balanced by a big, heavy knife, a Gurkha Kukris, on his left side.
Unlike a cavalry saber, this knife was bent forward, with the inner edge sharpened. The weight was near the tip, and it could have easily decapitated a man with a single swipe.
This knife, or short sword, had been a favorite of Alexander the Great's Greek troops, thousands of years ago, and it was they who had brought the design to the Gurkha's Himalayan homeland. The ancient Greeks, in turn, had probably gotten it from the Etruscans, who had used such blades for hundreds of years before them.
"So," I said in English, "I gather that the illustrious Gurkha battalion did not run away with the rest of Earth's forces."
"That would not have been in keeping with our traditions," he said in English, but with a crisp, sing-song accent. "I am Jemadar Puransing Thapa, of the Ninth Gurkha Battalion. And who might I be addressing, please?"
"I am General Mickolai Derdowski, of the Croatian Branch of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces."
"Ah. I have seen an excellent movie about your heroic actions. But you do not resemble the man I saw on the screen. May I take it that they used an actor to impersonate you?"
"No, that film was put together mostly from memory blocks of what happened in Dream World. The difference in appearance is due to the fact that my physical body is actually in the second tank back there. What you are looking at is a humanoid drone that I happen to be wearing just now."
"This is remarkable, sir. Your technology seems to be somewhat in advance of ours."
"Perhaps it is, a bit. More important, my employers are willing to spend lavishly to protect their troops from harm, whenever possible. You could have such technology, if you wished."
"I am afraid that I come from a very poor country, sir."
"Well, what I meant was that your people are mercenaries, the same as we are, right? And just now it would seem that you are unemployed. The KEF is always looking for good men, and getting a real Gurkha battalion to join with us would add greatly to our prestige and to our combat effectiveness. My superiors and I would be very proud to serve with such men as you. The pay is excellent, and we are equipped in a very lavish fashion."
"Indeed? Might I know how excellent, and how lavish?"
"In Earth dollars, an average line troop, say a tanker third class, makes about forty-six hundred a month, in addition to many fringe benefits. As to equipment, I can promise every one of you the command of a Mark XIX Main Battle Tank, just like those behind me, but brand new, right off the production lines. You would each get one on the very day that you enlisted."
"This is a very tempting offer, and one which I will certainly convey to my superiors. But, well sir, like most of my teammates, I have a wife and family back on Earth."
"I'm sure that we could get them out here, somehow. Earth is encouraging emigration to relieve their problems of overpopulation. Once we got them to almost any planet in Human Space, we could get your dependents to you quite easily."
"Then there was some truth to the rumors about the outer planets having an extensive smuggling network."
"It can't be much of a secret any more, since the bulk of Earth's forces have just used one of our transmitters to go elsewhere."
"We had also heard this. But do you know where they went?"
"Yes. They made a very poor choice of destinations. As best as we can tell, they are now sitting in the middle of a completely deserted continent on New Nigeria."
"Indeed. Are the other planets like this one? My wife would not be happy living in a cave underground, even a golden one."
"New Kashubia is unique. I am based out of New Yugoslavia, which is an agricultural world, and a beautiful one. I have a valley of my own there, with a large, empty city in it that I hope to fill with our veterans. In fact, there is a golden castle which I think would be big enough to house your entire battalion, with your dependents. Plus, we eagerly accept women into our ranks. My own wife is with me right now, doing rear-guard duty in the last tank back there."
"I am astounded, and I will surely convey your excellent offer to my colonel. But for now, I have some information for you. I had been searching for the rest of Earth's forces, at the request of the Kashubian general staff, whom we came across a short while ago. But since those forces appear to be gone, I suppose that you will do just as well," he said, trying to keep himself from laughing.
"It is really quite amusing, actually," he continued. "It reminds me of the historical incident where the Russian forces, under Ivan the Terrible, sat across a river for several weeks with a Mongol horde on the other side. Each side was very frightened of the other, and did not dare to attack. Finally, after sitting there for over a month, Ivan's nerve broke, and he ordered a retreat. When the Mongols saw the activity in his camp, they assumed that he was attacking, and they ran away. Actually both sides ran away, that day, without ever doing any fighting at all."
"I have read of the incident," I said. "But how does that compare to our present situation?"
"Your general staff, sir, has been waiting for some time now, in full dress uniforms, for the enemy to appear and accept their surrender!" I could see that the jemadar was working hard to keep from rolling on the floor, laughing.
I was laughing, too. "The genera
l staff commands the home forces, and is quite separate from the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces. It would seem to be a great insult to keep them waiting much longer. I am minded to go myself and accept their surrender. Their swords would look very nice on my wall at home!"
"Then follow me, sir. I shall lead you to them, and witness this remarkable historical event!"
"Excellent! But tell me please, who is this strange person who is so eager to surrender at a time when his enemy has run away?"
"You do not know? His name is Supreme General Tados Wolczynski, and I think that he might be a political appointee, for he does not have the bearing of a truly military man."
"No, I've never heard of him. He must be new. Let us go forward, my young friend, and write a new page in military history!"
CHAPTER THIRTY
We Surrender! We Surrender!
On the way there, Agnieshka said, "Mickolai, you are acting crazy again! You can't possibly intend to accept the surrender of your own superior officers!"
"Can't I? Look, it is obvious that something very rotten is going on here. As soon as the enemy started falling back, our troops should have been hard on their heels, but that obviously hasn't happened. And now that the enemy has run away, our side is trying to surrender, if this Gurkha is telling the truth, and I think that he is. My orders were that I should not subordinate myself and my squad to the general staff, but that we should stay independent and to do what was best for my planet. I intend to do just that, and to find out what is going on. You're with me on this, aren't you Kasia?"
"Yes, but at the same time, you'd better keep your little ass covered, because if this turns out to be as bad as it seems, the politicians will want to cover up this whole incident. Burying you would be the easiest way for them to do that."
The War With Earth Page 23